Posted
by
timothy
on Friday September 02, 2011 @07:10PM
from the was-about-to-grab-it-actually dept.

First time accepted submitter josn writes "Today I found out that Moonlight's Tricorder app, which I always install on Android devices, is gone. Google received a DMCA letter from CBS. I think it is a shame that CBS thinks it needs to kill a free and open source project giving a ad-less app. I, for one, sent a message to CBS explaining that this fan-supported app is not bad, but good for them, and asked them to reconsider. I hope, especially for the author, who must have spent a lot of time on this app, that they do."

I love that app. Does anyone know, for those of us who still have it installed, Android App Market doesn't automatically uninstall apps without user permission (like they'll remove books from the Kindle) in cases like this, do they?

*sigh* I've been saying this for a long time.This is why you shouldn't use other companies to store your files, unless you locally encrypt it first - don't want a rogue DCMA taking down your files, now, do you?You should also keep multiple local copies, just in case. It's always worth it.

No. It does not. Also, you can still install the Tricorder app by finding the APK on the web, checking 'Unknown Sources' (Settings->Applications), then issuing: 'adb install tricorder.apk' while your phone is connected to a PC that has the ADB drivers installed. Otherwise you can download the APK to your phone and use Astro Filemanager to install it.

"Unknown Sources" has nothing to do with using adb install. It will work whether or not you have "Unknown Sources" checked or not. That is only if you want to allow other applications on the device to install applications e.g. allow the browser to install an apk that it downloaded, or allow a third party market application to install an application.

It only does remote uninstalls in case of active malware (that got installed through the Market). Just to be safe thought, if I were you, I'd root my phone and backup the app with Titanium Backup (their free version is enough).

I don't ever expect Google to turn themselves into Amazon, it would be a stupid PR move on their part, but if there is ever a court order ordering them to do a mass remote uninstall, I don't expect them to refuse such an order.

Once you get past the geek-factor -- and it's considerable -- the tricorder app actually is kind of cool. It wraps several useful functions into a single app, and they all work rather well. I wish the accelerometer would display in some kind of useful unit, rather than a generic graph, and I wish it had some kind of a peak indicator, but even as it is, it was a useful app.

Klingon cruisers are definitely equipped with photon torpedoes in-canon; they use they against V'Ger in ST:TMP. Birds of Prey fire torpedoes in ST6. It is a cloaked Bird of Prey that fires while cloaked, so its possible previous variations were different; Christopher Lloyd'd (Kruge's) ship in ST3 destroyed the Grissom with an undisclosed weapon that were probably disruptors, though later, after being damaged it alternates and fires what are almost definitely torpedoes.

This is the kind of annoying thing the lawyers just automatically do. I think a petition campaign might be effective in this case. If the app doesn't harm them, annoying geeks does, they might reconsider.

I would have paid one dollar for the app. Maybe CBS wants to reconsider instead, contract the developper to modify the app. If they keep the open source version, they could have a different theme for the OSS one.

1.) Moonblink's Tricorder app was neither made nor intended to divert profits or attention away from the Star Trek franchise/collection of works. In fact, it was written in homage to the series, and it's really hard to imagine how it could even unintentionally harm CBS in any way, shape or form, especially given that the app (and the part of Star Trek it's emulating) is fairly trivial. It was basically harmless. CBS squelching it seems more out of spite or misgu

Actually, it isn't the name "tricorder" that's at issue here. According to the original text, Roddenberry himself said anyone who could produce a functional equivalent was allowed to use the name "Tricorder"... the problem is the use of an interface that mimics the LCARS user interface from later Star Trek shows. Tweak the look and I bet he'd still be able to get away with calling it a tricorder.

But that would be covered by a *design patent* not a copyright. Copyright covers *specific* creative works - I don't see how this app could violate a copyright unless it included *specific* elements owned by CBS, such as sounds and images. Just putting rounded rectangles on the screen should not be enough to trigger a copyright takedown since CBS would need to point to the specific original work that was copied. LCARs itself cannot be copyrighted - the name can be trademarked, and certain design elements

Roddenberry is dead. He can't say anything anymore. He can't pay a lawyer to say anything. Seriously, in a world where contracts are renegotiated on a daily bases to favor the richer, do you believe a corpse's empty words count for anything?

Does CBS even own a Star Trek trademark? Isn't that owned by Paramount/Viacom?

And I get that you need to defend trademarks, but I don't know that a tricorder app violates that. JJ Abrams is in no hurry on the next Star Trek movie. There is no TV show on the air. Keeping fans thinking about Star Trek with little things like this only adds value to the property on the whole.

Corporate ownership
-----
At Star Trek's creation, Norway Productions, Roddenberry's production company, shared ownership with Desilu and, after Gulf+Western acquired Desilu in 1967, with Paramount Pictures, the conglomerate's film studio. Paramount did not want to own the unsuccessful show; net profit was to be shared between Norway, Desilu/Paramount, Shatner, and NBC but Star Trek lost money, and the studio did not expect to syndicate it. In 1970 Paramount offered to sell all rights to Star Trek to Roddenberry, but he could not afford the $150,000 ($848,000 today) price. In 1989 Gulf+Western renamed itself as Paramount Communications, and in 1994 merged with Viacom.[70]:218,220,223 In 2005 Viacom divided into CBS Corporation, whose CBS Television Studios subsidiary retained the Star Trek brand, and Viacom, whose Paramount Pictures subsidiary retained the Star Trek film library and rights to make additional films.[71]

Everyone always thinks it's an evil corporation trying to spoil fun but there's a fundamental reason. If they don't defend trademarks and copyrights then other corporations can use the names to sell products. What's to stop Apple or Microsoft from releasing a new PDA or tablet computer called a "Tricorder"? They can say CBS failed to enforce the trademark so it no longer applies. What if the device sucks and the name Tricorder takes on negative image or worse yet becomes a bad joke? Then their trademark ove

You don't. If you read the takedown notice it turns out CBS has some kind of PADD-themed Star Trek triva app [apple.com] in the Itunes store and they don't want competition. Which is sensible considering the comments make it sound pretty pants.

If it were say a system that mattered for the name, say the app was called Star-Trek the next generation gadget. or whatever I could see it, the actual series name would be harmful for them to have used by others, but the name of one small item in the show, lets say it were microsoft, and they did release a tri-corder as a stand alone device based on windows CE, it gave inaccurate information and blue screened every 2 seconds. Would that effect how likely you will be to watch the next star trek movie or sho

I've never heard of the tricorder app before. After finding some information about it ( http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/turn-your-android-phone-into-a-real-star-trek-tricorder/ [makeuseof.com] ) and looking at what it does: "sense environmental factors like magnetic flux, acceleration, sound waves and even solar activity...", it seems to me that saying the project has been "killed" by CBS seems a bit premature. The interface and name ("Tricorder") is certainly drawn from Star Trek inspiration, and while I don't see how this

You can't copyright the word "tricorder". The app (according to the posts that someone else posted here) doesn't infringe on any copyrights of screen design or anything like that (and it looks more like the LCARS interface from TNG, which CBS holds no claim to - that would be Viacom, owners of Paramount).

There is only one live entry for a registered trademark for "tricorder", and that's held by Paul Allen's company named Kiha Software, which holds the trademark as it relates to mobile device programs.

Really. Well, that sucks even more. I actually use the Tricorder app, and I have absolutely no interest in Star Trek fangeek content. I've seen all the photos of Nana Visitor I care to see this lifetime. They'd be better served hiring the guy and making it a paid (but inexpensive) app.

A similar story [ilounge.com] made the rounds last April. CBS claimed copyright infringement on the "DiagnosticPADD" app for the iPad. Specifically, CBS claimed

“the Application uses the ‘PADD’ trademark and the interface is substantially similar to CBSS’ copyrighted LCARS interface. Your use of the Series’ Properties improperly trades on the goodwill and reputation of CBSS and the Series and is likely to cause confusion among consumers that the Application is affiliated with or licensed by CBSS and/or the Series. CBSS has concluded that such use constitutes trademark infringement, dilution, passing off and misappropriation under the Lanham Act and applicable state laws, as well as copyright infringement under applicable U.S. copyright law and counterpart laws around the world.”

What's confusing to me is they seem to flip back and forth between copyright and trademark infringement. I'm not sure how either would apply here anyway.

Unless they've actually filed for a trademark on this stuff, then it's actually more an issue of "trade dress" - ie being "confusingly similar". I really can't see how they can argue that there's any copyright violation.

That's why we let a fictional, non-functional application veto the production of an actual, useful product. Although, looking at America's industry and economics, it does seem that they value fiction over reality.

They sent the link from an apple store app as their right to license of an image? Something smells less legal. If Google will react to such a weak request you can probably send them anything you want and get any app taken down.

That's how the DMCA works. They file, and the author is given an opportunity to say "no, I do have the rights to this", in which case it goes back up and CBS can go to court with a record that the author claims ownership and the host (in this case Google) is free and clear legally, as it is now between CBS and moonblink. In this case, the author didn't. It does use LCARS style interface and tricorder sound effects.

Been there, done that in about 16 years of commercial hosting. In the case of child porn,

Now, I used to have an app on my Palm PDA that pretended to be a tricorder but didn't actually do anything (other than make some chirp noises and display various jokes). That's not what this is; this "tricorder" app displays the outputs from various sensors on an Android phone. You can get a magnetic compass, sound data from the microphone, GPS data, etc. The DMCA takedown isn't about this functionality, but just about the LCARS interface.

The solution is obvious: reskin the app, using an Android sort of theme, and for extra safety change the name. The result shouldn't bother CBS anymore.

I don't even really like LCARS much.

P.S. I presume that CBS will go after the people who install LCARS themes on their desktops. What a waste of time.

According to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricorder In Gene Roddenberry contract if any of the technology in star trek gets invented they can use the name free of charge. Is it that now he is gone they will ignore that part of there original contract?

According to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricorder [wikipedia.org] In Gene Roddenberry contract if any of the technology in star trek gets invented they can use the name free of charge. Is it that now he is gone they will ignore that part of there original contract?

This isn't about the name, that would be a trademark issue, and CBS couldn't avail themselves of the DMCA. CBS is claiming a copyright on the design of LCARS, which this app uses.

Being that I'm not an actual lawyer, and just read in law, I can't say for sure if this is a valid copyright, but then I know enough to say that this probably ought be argued in a court... (the more you read in law, the more you want to actually litigate matters in general... I suppose it makes for good business for lawyers?)

I guess those scientists working on quantum teleportation better quit before they get sued then. And theres no legal chance of anybody inventing a real warp drive because of the legal issues, we are going to be stuck in this solar system until we go extinct.Extinction may be sooner than we thought too, if there is an asteroid heading towards earth we can't go and blow it up without being sued by Atari

How come google are gatting awat with calling their user interface Android ?

One of the truly useful apps on the market. Yes, I've needed a magnet detector. (Geocaching). I've needed to analyze ambient noise. I've needed a compass and GPS. I've needed to see what networks were around me. I even used the Solar page to see why my GPS wasn't working worth crap that day (solar flare).

Ah, fascism, isn't it great? It is amazing to think how completely the corporate world is allowed to rule our lives. What we can buy, where we can buy and ever what we can do with it once we have bought it.And of course of government is no where to found as they are too busy making new laws to protect our corporate guardians.

Tell me, I cannot be the only one who feels this way! The time is close I think for change. The economy is in the crapper, our "leaders" are fighting themselves harder and harder, we se

I wonder why CBS was so clueless? It was FREE ADVERTISING! Its not in a competing market . Everyone who gets this fun app, or shows it to their friends is reminding everyone of the Star Trek series and movies. Some (small, but not zero) number of those people will go home and rent or stream one of the shows.

It was a really fun app - and impressive for just how much the sensors on a modern phone can do.

You know, this made me laugh, and I got to thinking... the message CBS is sending seems counter to the underlying motif that ties most Star Trek episodes together.

Now, I'll confess: I'm no Trekkie, and it's been YEARS since I've even watched a single episode, but IIRC, TNG pushed an idea of a near utopian society with no money (actually, just cross-referenced with Wikipedia, but I seem to remember this from an episode or two). So CBS claims to

What CBS doesn't want to have happen here is to get this whole thing to backfire in a legal sense as well. I don't think this particular group making the tricorder app is claiming that it is official "Star Trek" merchandise implying some sort of branding and official sanctioning from CBS/Paramount Studios. It also demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of trademark law as well.... other than one teeny tiny part which is that trademarks must be enforced or lost.

It's available on google code still. It's a little bit of a pain to build...I had to combine the HermitAndroid and HermitLibrary src into the Tricorder project, and then delete said libraries. (but I build with CLI, eclipse may end up being easy peasy)
svn checkout http://moonblink.googlecode.com/svn/trunk [googlecode.com] moonblink-read-only
As I'm not an anonymous coward, if I distributed the APK, would the DMCA trolls smash my head open?

switch to "plain text" mode in your account settings. It's not really plain text, it's the same as HTML, but it auto adds a br tag where you add line breaks. You still have all the html formatting options, you just don't have to manually add break tags

Per the short and sweet developer's note behind the link, Roddenberry stipulated that others could use the 'tricorder' name. The take down notice seems to take issue with the LCARS look-n-feel. Thus, CBS could in theory start throwing takedown notes at all the sites featuring LCARS GUI themes. I'm going to guess the only reason this particular app got noticed is because enough Android phones have seeped through the ranks at CBS and their in-house counsel.

"Look and feel" legal issues are a copyright infringement, not a trademark infringement.

The issues of "intellectual property" are very well spelled out in this article by Richard Stallman:

It is definitely worth a read and a philosophy I embrace completely to the point I rarely if ever even use the term "intellectual property" and have even corrected law makers when they've used the term in a general sense.

Furthermore, "look and feel" is so vague as to not really be enforceable except in a broad sense. Th

Well, ever since they stopped the Star Trek series, it's still been going on in the minds of fans.The only chance CBS has of truely killing this brand is by making sure it isn't referenced anywhere.It's the only way to ensure they will fail when they will inevitably try to resurrect the Star Trek franchise.

The Android Market has something for developers that your precious WP7 doesn't: hundreds of millions of customers for your apps.

This is a neat little app - one of the first things I show people when they're curious about what an Android phone can do. I'm sure that the StarTrek branding will be filed off and the app relaunched as "Central Built-in Sensors: Scientific Universal Command Kit System" or something like that. In the meantime we'll sideload it, even if we have to download it from a sane country.

The app is surprisingly useful: accelerometer, audio spectrum analyzer, compass to name a few... it does everything you'd expect a "real" tricorder to do, with the only limitations being the phone hardware.

I had a joke app like this on my old PalmOS devices. It didn't have any real scanning functions, it had configurable messages you could bring up after a "scan" by pressing one of the scroll buttons on the PDA. I programmed messages into it like "No intelligent life found" and "Biohazard: Extreme bacterial infestation detected" and "Methane eruption source located"

The app is surprisingly useful: accelerometer, audio spectrum analyzer, compass to name a few... it does everything you'd expect a "real" tricorder to do, with the only limitations being the phone hardware.

exactly, it is surprisingly useful. Surely it's possible for the app author to have the app exist just without a lCars skin? (maybe someone else can make one)

I mean, seriously, fuck you CBS, for ending my last bit of nerdiness fun with Star Trek. CBS have well and truly killed the innocent fun of ST more effectively than any Borg could. If I could shit in their mouths I would for the crap that dribbles of their chins.

Thank you moonblink for giving us this app while we could have it, and I will continue to enjoy it on my droid while I can. However it is OSS, where can I get the source and can you GPL 3 the shit out of it so that, somehow, CBS can't use the code base?

If Star Trek was a real utopian future, it would be an Open Source one I simply couldn't imaging a situation below happening

JLP: Mr Worf Fire Phasers and a full photon torpedo spread

WORF; Captain, Phasers and Photon torpedos are inoperable

JLP; Lt Worf, get the weapons operational and fire on that ship or we are all dead

WORF; Sir I cannot, the console is reading an obscure error message I have never seen before

DATA; A licence key is a obscure reference to a late twentieth century method of limiting the capabilities of computer systems to extract payment, it was often used with other techniques such as...

WORF; This enemy has the guile of a Romulan and the treachery of a Ferengi slave trader (Worf smashes his fist into the console in utter frustration)

JLP; Lt Le Forge, get us out of here maximum warp

Le FORGE; Captian, I love to comply but the anti-matter injector controller control systems are saying things I've never seen before

RIKER; Let me guess, another licence key expiry, the damn ship is falling apart, but it's still in one peice..

Le FORGE; No sir, the controller system is saying it has encountered a patent violation and cannot continue

DATA; As I was saying Sir, with other techniques such as patent encumberance, licence revocation and software keys. Generally it was found to limit innovation as it reduced the number of minds able to create and solve problems the human race faced with software. Those who did were branded Pirates and "Open Source Hippies"

JLP; Hippies?, I'm ashamed just how much like the Ferengi we were...

RIKER; (whispers to Picard) Captain, if we can stop them they can take the entire Federation without firing a shot

(just then the com heralds a message from Dr Crusher)

CRUSHER; Captain, all my medical equipment has suddenly lost all but the most basic functionality

JLP; We are encountering similar issue Dr Crusher, are there any messages

CRUSHER; Yes Captain, it's saying that our trial period has ended and we will have to "purchase" a full licence to access all the functionality, Captain we have wounded...

JLP; (just as LeForge steps out of the Turbo Lift) Dr Crusher, you will just have to resort to some of that "old Fashioned" medicine you speak of and...

WORF; Captain we are being hailed by the enemy vessel

JLP; On Screen

CBS MANAGEMENT; We've noticed that you have not been pulling the consistent ratings you've done in the past so we are pulling the plug, wind your series up in an express way that make some sense of the story line, you won't be funded past a 7th season

JLP; Release my ship immediately, we have no expectations of being good all the time, just the best we can be, now release my ship